


Learning the Hard Way

by reapertownusa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Caning, Child Abuse, Community: blindfold_spn, Corporal Punishment, Figging, Gen, Humiliation, Object Insertion, Rape/Non-con References, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-03
Updated: 2011-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-22 04:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapertownusa/pseuds/reapertownusa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an effort to make Dean consider his own safety, Sam resorts to the thing Dean hates most of all - ginger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning the Hard Way

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Corporal punishment including disciplinary figging, references to past child abuse and a micro reference to past underage non-con.
> 
> Author’s Note: Season 1-ish AU in which John died when the boys were little and they were raised by other hunters. Written for a blindfold_spn prompt requesting figging.

Dean had been pacing for hours. Sam had been doing his damndest to ignore it, but the constant nervous motion had his nerves frayed raw by the time he closed his laptop. He couldn’t even pretend he’d still been thinking about research as he pushed back his chair and headed to the kitchenette.

“Pants off.”

Dean shifted uneasily where he stood suddenly frozen. “Sam...”

“Don’t. Man, how many times did I warn you?” Sam narrowed his eyes on his brother. “And I know exactly how many so think real carefully before you open your mouth.”

His brother looked as if he was counting on his fingers before he sent Sam a helpless glance. “Five?”

Sam let the incorrect answer slide because he doubted Dean knew the actual answer. Part of the problem was Dean tuning him out. His brother was an advocate of asking for forgiveness rather than permission and that tactic only worked if Dean conveniently didn’t hear Sam’s warnings.

What Dean considered to be Sam’s annoying bitching was Sam trying to keep his brother alive. It wasn’t easy and, this week, he’d nearly lost the battle.

They had been trying to stop a coven in a small town where nearly every local was a practitioner. Going in, they’d suspected as much and still twice while Sam was standing right next to Dean, he’d had to stop his brother from sneaking off for some alone time with girls who were way too interested.

It had been an even dozen times that Sam had warned Dean of the risks to himself if he let anyone in town tempt him, and of the more immediate risk to his ability to sit if Sam caught him taking stupid chances just to get laid.

Dean had ignored every last word and had instead listened to the lies of a waitress in some dive bar who had claimed to be from out of town. For someone who made a living out of lying, his brother could be damn trusting when his libido was in the driver’s seat.

What Dean had thought would be a quickie Sam would never find out about had turned into two days of hell for them both. Sam had ripped the town apart before finding his brother bound and bleeding out in the basement of the town’s city hall.

There hadn’t been time for told you so as he’d untied his brother, scooped him into his arms and rushed to the closest hospital that was far enough away to be safe. When Dean had regained consciousness, Sam had said it was okay, they’d talk later.

Now that Dean was fully recovered, it was time for that talk.

The unease in Dean’s posture made it clear that he was well aware that the talk wasn’t going to involve only words. Sam could talk, shout at the top of his lungs until he was blue in the face and all it ever did was put Dean on the defensive.

In conversation, his brother would make his snarky comments and easily blow Sam off. While Dean made an art of ignoring words, it was far harder for him to ignore the topic when he was pinned exposed over Sam’s knees. The position forced Dean to surrender his defenses.

It maybe wasn’t normal or right, but nothing about their lives was. This was what they knew and, as much as Sam hated being the one to hurt his brother, he couldn’t dispute the effectiveness. He would far prefer to take a hard hand to Dean than to have to build his brother’s funeral pyre.

What Sam wasn’t okay with was spanking his brother again for the same offense.

This time it had been witches, last month it had been a succubus Sam had to heat Dean’s ass over. Next time Sam might not be lucky enough to find Dean thrashing in a pool of his own blood or having the life-force drained from him in a shitty motel room.

Last time hadn’t been memorable enough to make Dean think twice, so Sam didn’t have any choice but to up the ante. That’s why Dean had been pacing like a neurotic pit bull. He knew a spanking wasn’t all his ass was getting.

Over the years of being passed from one pathetic excuse of a home to the next, Sam had picked up some more persuasive techniques. A lot of them he’d never think of using on his brother, but others didn’t cause harm while still having a profound effect on Dean.

Sam would be the first to agree that their dad had been absent at best. He’d been obsessive, borderline emotionally abusive to Dean, and probably would have been to Sam too if Sam had given a damn. But in retrospect, even Sam could see Dad had loved them. He’d done the best he could in an impossible situation. Maybe he’d fucked it all up, but at least he’d tried.

It was more than he could say of the various homes they’d been passed around to after the hunting partner Dad had last gone out with came back alone. Instead of being turned over to the state, they’d been passed from one group of hunters to the next. It turned out that a lot of hunters lived on the edge of society for reasons that went beyond demons.

Dad had been a jerk at times and he’d drank more than he should have, but he’d never taken a belt to them just because he’d had a bad day. Sam had never walked in on Dad holding his brother down on a bed, shoving his face into a pillow while he fucked him.

Some places had been better than others, some had even been good, but those ones had never worked out.

By the time they’d been passed onto an old retired hunter, they’d had a reputation for being troublemakers even though they’d only ever fought back to protect each other. No one cared why ten-year-old Sam had shot Luis in the hand or why Dean had busted up his own fists beating down Garry.

Somehow everything that went wrong had always been their fault.

Ms Fredrick – eight months they’d lived with her without having figured out her first name – had been determined to break them of their disobedient ways. She was ancient and had a thing for old school punishments. The hag was just lucky Dean would never hit a girl, even creepy, sadistic ones.

One day, Sam had come home from school to find his brother with his pants around his ankles, sitting in a chair actually doing homework. The sight had been startling, not because Dean was in the kitchen half naked, but because he was actually doing school work. Dean had sworn he was dropping out after the first week, and twelfth fight, of his tenth grade.

It had taken a moment for Sam to move past his shock enough to see that Dean was squirming like he was sitting on hot coals. His ass had been clearly stripped from what must have been a nasty caning, but it wasn’t the first Dean had received.

From behind, Sam had seen the tremble of Dean’s shoulders and when he’d walked around the table he’d seen the tears before Dean swiped them away.

Ms Fredericks had sat in the corner chair reading a book. She’d peered over the top only long enough to tell Sam that he best be getting to his homework unless he wanted a figging too. Sam had quickly discovered, as did Ms Fredericks, that there wasn’t much Dean hated more.

It hadn’t been the cane, but the ginger root stuck up Dean’s ass, that had his brother openly crying. Sam had gawked in disbelief, first at the fact that it would occur to anyone to stick ginger up there, and second that a piece of ginger could reduce his proud big brother to tears.

Dean was far more sensitive to ginger than Sam. Soon enough, Sam had earned himself a figging and it had burned like hell and was one of the most stupid, humiliating things Sam had endured, but it had still been the crack of the cane he’d hated most.

Not Dean. His brother could march through pain like no one else, but it was obvious from watching him that the ginger burnt him badly. At least it felt like it was burning him, while not doing any actual harm. Dean wasn’t convinced of that of course.

Sam knew Dean’s stomach was even more knotted than Sam’s as he opened the mini-fridge and pulled out the fresh ginger root he’d picked up from the grocery store this morning. He’d waited to do this until late afternoon because he’d wanted Dean to have plenty of time to think about what was coming and, hopefully, about why.

When Dean had only poked at this double bacon cheeseburger at lunch, Sam knew his plot had worked, but he didn’t want Dean to miss dinner. While his brother would never believe it, Sam wanted to get this over with even more than Dean.

He set the ginger on the scarred wooden cutting board with a knife and pushed them across the counter towards Dean.

His brother stood at a safe distance with his hands fidgeting in front of him in a shallow attempt to make himself less exposed. On one of the kitchen chairs, Dean’s jeans and boxers were folded in a neat pile, his boots set in a line beside the chair. They both had plenty of practice at this.

Dean still wore a clinging back t-shirt with a hemline that barely reached midway on his hips. It didn’t offer privacy for either Dean’s groin or Sam’s target and Sam knew all too well why his brother, who usually said he felt like a moron wearing only a shirt, had left it on.

Beneath the shirt were the still livid scars left behind from the witch’s dagger. Dean no doubt thought hiding the healing wounds would stop Sam from going more ballistic than he already had.

His brother didn’t realize Sam already had every cut seared into his brain. He couldn’t forget every inch of skin where Dean’s dwindling blood supply had seeped from his body.

Now, with the resurfaced memory, it was Sam’s patience that was dwindling. He motioned his brother towards the counter. “Come on, Dean.”

His brother swallowed before coming to stand at Sam’s side. Dean stood staring at the ginger root with more trepidation than he would have shown in the face of an entire demon army before finally lifting the knife.

With an expert hand, Dean peeled and shaped a long slice of the root, leaving an ample flare at the end. He worked silently and with a total focus typically reserved only for hunts. This was one thing Sam could trust Dean to be careful about.

His brother would rather die than try to explain that he had a giant piece of ginger stuck in his ass to a cute ER nurse. Dean probably had nightmares about not being able to get the thing out.

Sam had done his research before considering this a safe punishment for Dean. The effectiveness of the ginger slice was supposed to fade after a while even if left in place, but Sam wouldn’t tell his brother that.

When Dean finished his whittling, he handed the finished product to Sam for inspection. It was an amply sized plug that would more than get the job done.

“Okay, wash your hands,” Sam said. “I don’t want you to get the juice in your eyes.”

“Apparently you don’t mind getting it up my ass,” Dean grumbled.

“You earned this all on your own, Dean. I hope she was worth it.”

Dean’s eyes wandered towards the ceiling thoughtfully as he dried his hands on a dirty dish rag. “She was pretty damn hot, but the bitch knocked me out before we got anywhere.”

Sam shook his head, not sure whether to apologize or smack his brother on the back of the head. He settled on saving it for Dean’s ass.

“She could have killed you. She almost did.”

He set his hand firmly on Dean’s back and bent him forward over the kitchen table. His brother reached across the beaten wood, hands tightly gripping the far side of the small table as he spread his legs and surrendered his backside to Sam.

“I warned you to stay away,” Sam said as he parted the resisting muscles of Dean’s cheeks.

Dean’s puckered entry was already clenching, something Dean would be real quick to try to stop once the motion only tightened his internal muscle’s stinging grip around the ginger.

Sam’s hand rubbed the small of Dean’s back, trying to relax him, if only a little. “I warned you to for one damn minute just think about your own safety and you opted for this.”

The moistness of the freshly cut ginger didn’t require lube, which would only hinder the effectiveness. Sam pressed the cool tip in slowly, letting Dean’s body accept it as his brother moaned in protest.

“For someone who’s so damn smart,” Dean huffed, “you’d think you could figure out that’s an exit, not an entrance.”

“You can’t complain about the fit. You cut it.”

When it was pushed in up to the flare, Sam left Dean draped over the table while he went to wash his hands. The ginger took a minute to kick in. By the time Sam was ready, Dean was already making soft, desperate sounds he’d be embarrassed as hell to know that he made.

Sam could use the chair right beside Dean for the spanking, but even though he sometimes seemed it, Dean wasn’t petite by any stretch of the imagination. His stocky brother was unwieldy over Sam’s lap and the small kitchenette provided little clearance. As stoic as Dean would claim to be, there would be at least kicking, if not a full on struggle.

Besides, Sam needed Dean to remember this and it was the clenching of Dean’s ass that really brought out the burn of the ginger. Ms Fredrick had made Dean hold the root in himself while he walked up and down the stairs until he’d begged for the concluding caning.

Sam had hated her for that, for a lot of things, but Dean had rarely done anything aside from not have time to complete a chore he’d honestly been trying to get to or letting a defensive comment slip after Ms Fredrick insulted their actual parents.

The punishment hadn’t fit the crime then, but this was life or death. Dean had to learn to listen, to at least think before he jumped.

Sam took one of the chairs from the table and walked it out into the main room. Dean’s face was hidden, forehead resting on the tabletop, but his shoulders tensed. He clenched and unclenched his hands’ grip on the table’s edge.

Once Sam was sure the burn of the ginger was in full swing, he settled down in the chair, thankful that his legs were as long as they were. Dean fit perfectly draped over his thighs, and Sam preferred that to spanking his brother over an impersonal piece of furniture.

It was the only thing Dean hated nearly as much as the unbearable sting of the ginger.

Dean was fine with a fist and boot beating or taking licks from a belt over a garage’s workbench. Hell, as far as Sam could tell, Dean was okay with dying. The only thing Dean couldn’t deal with was getting a spanking like the petulant child he sometimes acted like.

There was no room for bravado or posturing when Dean’s bare bottom was being roasted until his face was wet with tears from nothing more than the palm of his little brother’s hand.

“Okay,” Sam said.

Dean straightened stiffly, grimacing as the ginger root shifted inside of him. He took a few steadying breaths, ducking his head when his cheeks flushed as he had to move his hand and hold the ginger in his ass so that he could make the short, but torturous walk over to Sam.

His brother steadied himself with a hand on Sam’s thigh, letting Sam help lower him until he was positioned securely over Sam’s lap. Sam hooked one arm around Dean’s strong torso to secure him while his other hand checked the root’s position.

The jostling had started to push it out. Dean grunted when Sam pushed it back in. He twisted it in deeper, squeezing Dean’s ass firmly around it.

“Sam...fuck,” Dean gasped. His voice was already unsteady. “That hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“It’s a punishment, Dean. You’re not supposed to like it. Why are we doing this?”

“Because you’re the world’s most sadistic excuse for a brother.”

Sam’s hand came down unforgiving on Dean’s right ass cheek. Dean jerked in surprise, yelping as the partner swat landed on his left cheek and his muscles clamped in protest.

“Because I tried to screw the wrong witch?” Dean corrected, the desperation already sneaking into his tone.

Sam tightened his grip on his brother and laid down several more fast, hard swats. He kept it up at a steady pace until his brother became so caught up in the sting that he was whimpering without realizing it.

“Because I didn’t listen to you?” Dean tried again through gritted teeth.

“Closer.”

Sam laid down a barrage of slaps, painful enough that Dean’s hand tried to come up to cover his ass or maybe to yank out the root. Either way, Sam pushed his brother’s hand away, pinning it as he clutched Dean’s torso more firmly. He’d never hear the end of it if all Dean’s fussing landed his brother on the floor.

With Dean steadied, his strikes came harder, more than a few nailing Dean’s tender seat just below the ginger. When Dean bit back a cry, Sam let him rest.

His brother’s breaths came quick and shallow. Even as Sam sat perfectly still, Dean squirmed uncomfortably over his lap. Every muscle in Dean’s body went rigid when Sam readjusted the position of his hands.

Sam’s spanking hand was beginning to tingle from the force of the swats. It would save them both a lot of pain if Dean would stop being so damn dense.

“Because I did stupid shit that almost got us both killed...again,” Dean finally admitted.

“Yeah, you did.”

His own voice wasn’t much steadier than Dean’s before he delivered another punishing volley to the already deeply blushed skin. With Dean’s pale skin evenly flushed and Sam’s hand really starting to sting, he stopped randomly peppering Dean’s backside and strategically laid down the slaps.

“You’re going to start taking care of yourself, Dean. I’d settle for you just starting to care period.”

He settled in over the spot he knew Dean would feel the most in the driver’s seat tomorrow when they again hit the road. Each bruising swat also happened to drive Dean’s muscles tighter around the ginger.

It had his brother’s legs jerking and soon his entire body bucking against Sam’s grip. Dean’s breaths were ragged as he tried to scramble free of Sam’s hold. Sam seared a reprimand over Dean’s blistered skin, keeping it up until the fight had gone from Dean.

His brother lay boneless over him. Dean’s only movements were the desperate wriggling he couldn’t help. “Please, Sammy.”

Sam clenched his jaw and set his hand on his brother. The skin of his palm felt molten against the comparatively cool skin of Dean’s untouched lower back, which was still slick with nervous sweat.

“Don’t leave me alone, Dean.”

He could feel the tears in the gentle quaking of Dean’s back. Sam left Dean lying vulnerable over his knees for a couple minutes longer. His brother continued to squirm even as his breaths evened out.

“What are you going to start doing?” Sam asked.

“I’ll do anything you want if you get that damn root out of my ass.” Dean shifted his weight anxiously. His next words were as much a pained groan as they were intelligible English. “I fucking hate ginger.”

“I hate the thought of losing you.” Sam’s hand continued to rub over Dean’s coiled muscles as he felt his brother’s entire body began to tremble. “Next time I’m not gonna wait until you wind up in the hospital. If you don’t start considering your own safety, you’re gonna be driving from coast to coast with ginger up your ass.”

Dean shuddered. “I need to start listening to you. I need to start paying attention. I got it...and I’m sorry.”

Sam shook his head as he looked down at the excruciatingly red skin of his pleading brother. Taking mercy on him, Sam carefully slid the ginger from his brother. Dean released a shaky sigh.

Despite Dean’s claim that the burn lingered for days, Sam knew the sharpness of the burn dissipated nearly as soon as the root was removed and was gone soon after that.

After letting him rest a minute longer, Sam helped his brother to his feet. Dean finished drying his eyes before his hands went tentatively to the deep sting that wouldn’t so quickly go away.

“Holy crap,” Dean moaned. He rubbed his heated ass while he limped back to his jeans. “I take back that whole bit about you hitting like a girl. Why don’t you save some of that for the monsters?”

“I don’t care about the monsters – I care about you, Dean.”

“Lucky me.” Dean winced as he stepped into the unforgiving denim. He didn’t bother to button them, leaving the pants loosely open at his hips. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

“You okay?”

“I’ll live...that is if I don’t get ginger poisoning.” Dean stopped in the doorway to the bathroom and turned back towards Sam. “Do you know what cures ginger poisoning?”

Sam tried to hide his smile. “Not the apple pie you’re gonna tell me to get, but it’ll be waiting for you when you get out of the shower.”


End file.
